Single-Serving Photo

It’s been quite a hiatus for me and for Single-Serving Photo. My last post here was back in February, and so much has happened since then! First of all, if you’re reading this, thank you for not deleting me from your feed reader or taking me off of your bookmarks list. I know I haven’t been the chatterbox I once was, but I don’t like to post link wrap-ups and two-sentence thought fragments just for the sake of putting something online.

Anyway, on with the show!

First things first, JPG Magazine is back! After being effectively shut down due to budget and business problems, JPG has resuscitated itself mostly thanks to the outpouring of support from its community and highly visible demonstrations such as savejpg.com which presumably gave investors the confidence they needed to pump more necessary capital into the parent company of JPG Magazine, 8020 Media.

Now that JPG has risen from the dead, maybe I’ll actually contribute something! You should, too.

Second, my little hands-on instruction business, ArtPhotoWorkshops.com is going to be doing a series of low-cost, short “photo-walk” workshops in the New England area. Starting with Cape Cod in a week and then Boston after that, I plan to take us out to Newport, Rhode Island, possibly Northampton, Massachusetts, maybe even out to the Quabbin Reservoir for the nature lovers.

If there are places you’d like to explore and learn technique, composition, and mechanics of photography, leave a comment and I’ll see if we can visit them!

I just returned from Las Vegas and Death Valley on a workshop, no photos to show yet, but I think it was an extremely successful trip. Death Valley is by far one of America’s most impressive sights, I recommend seeing it once in your life (or if you’re crazy like me, twice). Las Vegas is a very challenging location to photograph, but I think I was able to snag at least a small number of cool images in between games of craps and tall beers!

There are a few other cool things I want to share, so stay tuned for kite photography, painting with a car, and my opinions on both.

Ritz Camera, while providing useful and satisfying services to some, has long been the target of my criticism. I find it laughable that free-minded individuals would pay Ritz’s extortionate prices for equipment and gain nothing but instant gratification from the ordeal. Their warranty leaves much to be desired, and though Ritz employees can sometimes be knowledgeable, there is definitely no guarantee of that.

Someone who would walk into a Ritz Camera (or their other brands, like Wolf Camera) and purchase a softbox made by some second-string manufacturer solely on the recommendation of an AP stringer who got the job at Ritz because the AP doesn’t even like them that much (no offense to AP stringers in general, here), is a fool. Plain and simple.

When the hardened, seasoned advice of a B&H sales associate is only a phone call away, and when that advice is backed by an enormous inventory of equipment available, usually immediately, from their warehouse, it seems a ridiculous proposition to even set foot into a Ritz Camera except in times of utter and complete desperation.

It surprises me to see customers milling about in Ritz without beads of near-boiling sweat rolling down their faces, because I can’t imagine a world where trusting my needs to a place like Ritz could be anything less than forced on me by dire circumstance.

That said, Ritz Camera has filed for Chapter 11 federal bankruptcy protection.

The reign of terror is almost at its end.

I don’t usually do these short news-breaking stories, but this one actually irked me. Rob Galbraith, notable photographer and outstpoken reviewer of photographic equipment and technique, published a story in his blog, Rob Galbraith: DPI, pitting the late-2008 unibody MacBook Pro 15” display against the displays of two similar laptops, the Dell Inspiron and the IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T60.

Conclusion? Despite Apple’s long-held position as a maker of laptops uniquely suited to field shooting, Galbraith says, “In ambient light environments which induce screen reflections, the late-2008 MacBook Pro 15 inch’s glossy screen moves deep into the not acceptable category.”

Though it remains in the running for one of the more accurate displays among laptops, it fails to outshine the Inspiron or the ThinkPad in overall color accuracy or viewing angle flexibility, according to Galbraith’s hands-on analysis.

Of course nothing is totally black and white in the field of photography or even technology, so be sure to read his full review and peruse some of the responses on the Slashdot post.

Okay, so I missed the boat on this by a little bit, but I think it bears discussion anyway. Earlier this month, an exhibition came to a close at the Yale University Art Gallery called “First Doubt: Optical Confusion in Modern Photography.” Optical confusion refers to that effect you get when you look at something and it isn’t immediately apparent what it is. The reaction is best when the subject matter is common and well-known, but portrayed in an unusual or misleading way.

For example, the photo to the right (which is from the aforementioned show) depicts a man’s chin, neck, chest, and part of his leg. The contrast and cropping, though, make it compositionally more interesting and somewhat more difficult to “figure out,” visually. I wouldn’t suggest that you run about photographing things in ways that nobody can ever puzzle out, or that high art must in some way be confounding to the general public, but you must admit that a composition that makes you scratch your head for a moment is going to hold your interest for that much longer.

The idea of optical confusion is (clearly) not new. I’m sure you’ve all seen the classic young woman/old woman illusion (shown at left), which, once you visually map out both images, seems to randomly flip-flop between the two in the mind’s eye. In photographic composition, this technique of close-cropping and creatively limiting the viewer’s understanding of what they are looking at can be a very powerful tool.

Take, for example, the image below (by Karin Rosenthal, “Belly Landscape,” 1980—which I snagged from The Online Photographer). When I first saw the image, I really thought it was a landscape; some sort of Adams-esque river valley. Of course by stating the title of the piece I’ve pretty much blown the lid on that optical illusion, but if you squint you can probably see it as a river valley again.

Certainly the specific genre of “body landscapes” is one with its fair share of avid creators, and it would be challenging now to forge new territory (no pun intended) within that space. Nevertheless, we can all take a cue from the clever way that the image misleads the eye.

The next time you’re out photographing or sitting in front of Lightroom (you do use Lightroom, right?), think about how you might add tension and interest to a composition through creative cropping, eliminating some of the most recognizable elements from a subject. Just a small tweak is all it may take to transform a solid, representative image into a thoroughly engaging work of optical confusion.

You can also purchase the official book containing selections from the collection used in the Yale University Art Museum show.

My thorough and attentive friends in the B&H affiliate department have sent word that they now have limited stocks of 5D Mark IIs!

The message reads, “We’ve just received word that the Canon EOS 5D Mark II is available in limited stock. Simply “add to cart”; ignore initial “back-ordered” message.”

According to Mike’s post over at TOP, their stock seems to be fluctuating in and out.

The price is $2,699 and you can buy it right here